I found something which made me more empathetic/sympathetic in regards to the "mammy" issue so I decided to make this post:
Darwin's nervousness of being left alone and his relationship with his wife
In regards to his husband/wife relationship giving insight to Darwin's psyche Peter Brent in his "Darwin: A Man of Enlarged Curiosity" writes of Darwin's relationship with his wife: "Their ties to each other were linked to childhood and the very beginnings of memory. They had a common history, a joint tradition. It is hard to think their relationship a passionate one, but it was happy, and the happiness had deep roots. (p. 316)"
On the other hand, Bradbury states according Peter Brent's biography that in Darwin and Emma's letters, Emma was "always the mother, never the child, Darwin always the child, never the father." In later years Darwin was to give his wife the nickname "mammy" and here is a sample of what Peter Brent referred to from Darwin's letters according to Bradbury:
"My dearest old Mammy ... Without you, when sick I feel most desolate .. Oh Mammy, I do long to be with you and under your protection for then I feel safe."
Bradbury cites Brent as stating that it is difficult to see that that this is a thirty-nine year old man writing to his wife and not a young child writing to his mother. Obviously, Brent's comments are subjective and each person will have to read Darwin's letters for themselves and decide whether "Emma was always the mother, never the child, Darwin always the child, never the father" in their correspondence. Barloon and Noyes interpret Darwin's behavior as a fear of being alone associated with his panic disorder. According to Barloon and Noyes, Darwin expressed to Dr. Chapman "nervousness when Emma leaves me".
Darwin and his "mammy"
Discussion in 'Baptist Theology & Bible Study' started by kendemyer, Jul 12, 2005.
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I don't know any evolutionists who deify Darwin to any extent. They appreciate his formulation of the Theory of Evolution, but they think he didn't have it all worked out properly. -
Darwin had impure thoughts and was a sinner. Anyone who would listen to the words of a man like that is a fool.
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I trust you are joking! Otherwise we'd all have to go about wearing earplugs all the time.
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No, I am a perfectly self actualized being. I can judge the truth in anything simply by revealing it's source.
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There is a very old tradition that we seldom see these days for a couple, especially an older couple, to refer to each other as "mother" and "father" . . . their roles in the family. So to prove Darwin weird, we'll need something more than the fact he called his wife "mammy".
And Travelsong, what if your enemy decides to confuse you by telling you the truth, trusting you'll automatically be led astray simply because it came from your enemy? Better to learn to trust the evidence. -
I believe Travelsong was being facetious.
My grandparents didn't call each other Mother and Father, but I've heard others in older generations doing this. -
"Why don't we be even-handed and go dig up some dirt on prominent young-earth Creationists, then?"
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Which can be copied from the following book if anybody truly feels the need.
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Creationists.html -
I think this sort of "Darwin bashing" just makes creationists look more desperate.
Among the faculties in biology at several large universities in which I have worked I have never met one of these so-called zealous Darwinists. -
I've always heard/read that Einstein was rather “scatter-brained” and eccentric, as well as an agnostic Jew. :eek:
Can we now just discount and do away with E=mc^2? Those nuclear weapons are really scary, but if the fundamental science behind them really was developed by a “nut-case”, maybe we don’t really have anything to worry about. Ya think? :cool: -
And according to what I know about Maxwell, who wrote the definitive equations about electric and magnetic fields and predicted the existance of radio waves, he was an eccentric solitary individual who was mortified if any female servant said so much as "excuse me" to him . . so turn in all your radios and tvs and anything else that runs on electricity, folks, the science was developed by a very weird man . . .
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